


A Book of Hours

by snowdragons



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Boat Sex, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Identity Issues, Identity Reveal, Jon Snow Knows Something, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen Smut, King's Landing, Marriage, Morning After, One Shot, POV Jon Snow, POV Third Person Limited, Post-War for the Dawn, Romantic Soulmates, The War for the Dawn, War, Weddings, Winterfell, it's not that smutty really, one (1) targling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-07 05:42:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18404258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowdragons/pseuds/snowdragons
Summary: "How many nights like last night does a man get in his life? How often do love and desire come together so perfectly in something that feels both like a beginning and like something whole in itself, nothing desperate or furtive or shameful in it? For some people, most people, it might never happen. They bed for duty, not love. Their houses join when their bodies do, nothing more.For him… well, he'd never expected any of it at all. A strange time to have such luck. No one has ever meant something like this when they saidgood fortune in the wars to come."A series of significant moments. Written for Jonerys Secret Santa 2018.





	A Book of Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Karna97](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karna97/gifts).



 

> _“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.”_ — Jorge Luis Borges
> 
> _“Time that withers you will wither me. We will fall like ripe fruit and roll down the grass together. Dear friend, let me lie beside you watching the clouds until the earth covers us and we are gone.”_ ― Jeanette Winterson, _Written on the Body_

 

**I. Morning**

 

In the last few months, he's gotten used to waking to the sound of waves lapping against the hull of a ship and the occasional gentle creak of the wood; to moving with the soft, rhythmic roll of the vessel. Such sunlight as the world may get that day reflects off the water and into the cabin, and sleep usually leaves him not long after dawn.

It's the same today, but today, he's not in his own cabin, and he's not alone.

He raises himself to one elbow with great care, then looks down at her, the fan of her dark lashes against her soft cheek -- so beautiful that it catches at him. He should get up and leave, make his way to his own bed before people are up and about and talking, but he can't bring himself to go, and he can't bring himself to wake her.

How many nights like last night does a man get in his life? How often do love and desire come together so perfectly in something that feels both like a beginning and like something whole in itself, nothing desperate or furtive or shameful in it? For some people, most people, it might never happen. They bed for duty, not love. Their houses join when their bodies do, nothing more.

For him… well, he'd never expected any of it at all. A strange time to have such luck. No one has ever meant something like this when they said _good fortune in the wars to come_.

He and Daenerys may be sailing to their future, or they may be sailing to the end of the world. There's no way of knowing which it will be, only hoping that they've spent the coin of their mutual trust on more time for everything that lives… but none of that required love or bedding, and what passed between them last night had little to do with houses or alliances or duty. It was for themselves, and for joy.

He shifts, looking away from her and moving to sit up, still careful, when her voice interrupts him. She's hoarse with sleep; it sounds like she's just licked her lips. Her eyes remain closed.

"-- Where are you going?"

 "I should leave, love," he murmurs, leaning towards her again, his beard brushing the small shell of her ear. She turns her head, just half an inch away, then back. "Back to my room. They'll all be up soon."

"No." As she says it, she rolls in the bed to face him, then opens her eyes to look up at him. "I don't care if they know. They'll get used to it soon enough. Stay. Stay with me a while longer, Jon Snow."

She tugs him closer, covers his mouth with hers, and after that, neither of them says much at all. It's easy to capitulate, easy to fall in to kissing her soft pink lips again, even easier to find his mouth trailing down her body, to taste her and make her cry out.

It's what they both want. For a while, every morning is like this.

 

**II. Midday**

 

Travel up the Kingsroad from White Harbor should only take two weeks, but because of the weather and the size of their party, it takes much longer: more than a week in the port city, more than three on the road.

The parts further south are not familiar to Jon, places he's seen only a few times in his life, but the landscape grows more and more recognizable the closer they get to Winterfell. When they break camp on the morning of the day before they'll be arriving, he sends a rider on ahead, someone who can go more swiftly than the whole train can, to warn of their approach.

So it is that all of Winterfell is out to greet its erstwhile king and its new queen.

There's always consolation in riding up to your home. He'd felt it even when his home was Castle Black, which had been something to resign himself to rather than something to rejoice in: the knowledge that Winterfell was no longer his home, that it had to be _that_ place instead. Today, there's been the feeling of real homecoming, that a warm fire and a bath and a hot meal will be waiting for them no matter what else lies ahead, and his heart thumps in his chest at the idea of seeing his brother and his sisters and introducing them to the woman who will be their goodsister.

But there's also been trepidation -- he is coming back exactly as he'd told the Northern lords he intended to, only with no crown, and he doesn't know how much they know of that or how they'll respond to it (with ill grace, he suspects, ill grace that they'll hide, because only a fool openly insults a woman who has two dragons in tow). And casting a long shadow over all of it is his persistent fear that things may likely be coming to an end. His hope is stronger now, but it's hard to break the habit of more than two years, the near-certainty that their doom is coming. How long do they have? A week, a moon, six? Or will they be able to fight hard enough to win the rest of their natural days? Then do it again when Cersei turns on them? The fact that Daenerys will be on their side then is argument enough for his fealty to her.

They ride in side by side: him on his dark brown ambler, her on her white palfrey. The dragons circle and cry in the sky overhead, so that the assembled people seem at first not to know where to look: at him and Daenerys, or high above them. They try to keep their eyes where they should, but it doesn't stop their discipline from breaking, from glances straying up every so often, in fear or in wonder.

Jon casts a glance at Daenerys, and the look she gives him in return says that she's familiar with this, that she doesn't hold it against them, that a little awe is good for everyone. And then she smiles graciously, expectantly, at her new people.

He scans the crowd for Sansa. Between her long auburn hair and her position up in front, she's easy to spot; her smile is cool, enigmatic, but he doesn't think it's exactly false, just undecided. There's a dark haired boy next to her, his face bright, the dragons a subject of fascination for him. The boy drops his chin as Jon rides in, eyes even brighter now, and Jon realizes his mistake. It's not a boy -- it's Arya. And she's waiting by his reins even as he's dismounting the horse, throwing her arms about him not a moment after his feet hit the ground. Sansa follows her, hanging back with more restraint.

Jon hugs Arya tight as anything: _Let me look at you._ They smile, clasp hands, but eventually she steps back so that Sansa can make her greetings and they can both be introduced to Daenerys, who wants no help dismounting.

And there's a dark-haired youth who is seated, who doesn't rise or bow. He doesn't initially look pleased to see Jon; his face doesn't show much at all, except vague interest. But when Jon meets his eye, he brightens almost imperceptibly, and raises his fingers from the arm of his chair, and gives a little wave of them, and Jon realizes that the boy isn't rising because he can't.

Bran. Bran is a man grown now, though just barely so.

That Sam is standing next to him is a surprise, but a welcome one. Jon half-embraces him, clapping him on the back, but looking at him curiously all the while. For his part, Sam seems nervous, and Gilly, standing behind him holding her son, watches Jon with large eyes. But Sam has often seemed a little nervous in the years Jon has known him, and Gilly has often watched him without saying much. _She was meant to be left down at Horn Hill_ , Jon remembers. _Why isn't she there?_ Maybe Sam couldn't part from her, or maybe his cruel father turned them away. Jon will find out later.

In all the buzz of homecoming, there's a danger of forgetting that Daenerys knows only the people she brought with her. Sansa will do her duty as a hostess, but these days, Sansa is only really warm when she's disarmed. So when Jon turns around, he isn't surprised to see that there's a lost look behind Daenerys's confidence. This isn't her home; she's never had one, he knows. These aren't her people, not yet.

He turns to her and offers his arm, in front of everyone.

"After you've washed off the dust of the road and rested," Bran says, bland as porridge, "Sam and I need to speak with you." Bran's gaze flicks to Daenerys, then back to Jon. "It's important. She should come, too."

Jon nods. "Tomorrow, then."

 

**III. Dusk**

 

They each go riding, in their way. His is a hard ride across snowy fields for the sake of riding, Ghost running alongside him, ducking into the woods now and then, but always reappearing. Daenerys is in the sky, somewhere above, with Drogon. He sees her wheel over him once, but other than that, she's far away, no sign of her. She told him once that she loves that sort of flying, that it makes her feel free.

Gods know that she probably wants to be free of this.

He doesn't know what will become of them now. Part of him wishes there had been a way to stay on the ship, to keep sailing for the rest of their lives, to never know what he knows.

It's not the blood between them. He doesn't think he would ever have looked to her if he had known, no matter what her -- what their family was like, but now that he has, that she reigns so fully in his heart, there's nothing to be done for it. The Starks and the Targaryens are both descended from such marriages, though on both sides, it was uncle to niece rather than aunt to nephew. That in itself seems ridiculous in its way: she's nearly a year younger than he is. And if no one had lied, and no one had rebelled, and no one had been mad and cruel, and no one had been burned, and his mother hadn't run off with his father, then none of this would have happened.

But Rhaegar had wanted another child, Bran said, because he knew something was coming, the end of mankind, and he'd wanted to fight it. He'd thought that he needed three children to do it, but he had only two. He had not expected love to come to him, when it had only been friendship with his first wife. And, Bran said, his gaze set on Daenerys and her sickened look when he said it, they had loved each other wildly, they had married for love, they had not known that their love would kill them both. And then Bran had said other things to convince Jon and Daenerys, things he shouldn't have been able to know.

Because Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark had married, Jon's claim to the Iron Throne is better than Daenerys's. So much better that he was named for the Conqueror, and for an old prophecy about who would have half a chance of saving the world, and for his dead half-brother, who'd never had a chance to save anything at all.

Jon has known one thing since they were told, one truth that cuts through all of it: Daenerys is the only part of any of this that he wants. He may have other rights, claims, responsibilities, but he wants to shove them all aside, to keep his mind on her and on what everyone needs to do to live.

For her part, one of the first things she did was to fall to her knees and vomit.

His horse has been stabled for the better part of an hour when he sees Drogon approach, then hears him land in the field outside of the east gate. It's not long before Daenerys stalks into the first courtyard, moving swiftly and with purpose.

He meets her in the yard, and for a long moment, they stare at each other, stricken. Still, he doesn't expect the words she blurts out to him. Renunciation, recrimination, a gentle admonition that she needs some time, but not what she actually says.

"-- I'm going to have a baby."

He gapes at her, disbelieving what he's heard. It's been going on two moons since their first night together. Is that long enough to know?

He takes her by her forearms, looks into her eyes. His heart is turning over and over in fear and relief and elation. "You're sure? Can you be sure?"

She looks back at him blankly, then says, "The time we've spent together… have I pulled away from you? Have I put you out of my bed because I had my blood?"

He doesn't know why he hasn't thought on this before now. She had told him of her barrenness, and while, deep in his gut, he hadn't been convinced, he also hasn't been looking for signs that she's with child.

But now that she mentions it, there's never been a night when she's turned him away or warned him of anything, and there's never been a night when there's been blood to clean afterwards. The child must have been conceived on the water in those first few weeks, or maybe in White Harbor.

There had been a day when he'd told Lord Manderly that he couldn't wed a Manderly girl, because he was already betrothed. The old lord had expressed gracious disappointment, but had then given them both fulsome congratulations, and later, in bed, there had been such special passion between Jon and Dany that he had lost track of where she ended and he began. If they had put the best of themselves into a little son or daughter, that would have been a sweet night for it.

She doesn't resist when he pulls her into his arms.

"I thought you were going to tell me you wanted to end things," he confesses. They cling to each other. "I thought it was the claim. I was afraid you thought we would fight each other."

That makes her stiffen, and she shakes her head against his shoulder, resolute. "No. We'll marry -- then there's no dispute. It's never been -- if I thought -- I came to free my people from Robert Baratheon, from Cersei. I came to make a better way. I came because this is my _home_. I've been looking my whole life for -- and I found you, and we didn't know, but -- "

Her words trail off, so he kisses her. She's not crying, but she is trembling, and when he moves to pull away, she puts her hands up to his jaw and pulls him close for another feverish kiss.

"I didn't want to tell you like this, Jon," she says, when the kiss breaks.

"I wouldn't fight you for anything." The words come out of him slow. "I thought -- when I asked you to be my wife, I thought about what people would say. I thought that they might say that I was using you as a path to something, as a ladder. That I was ambitious. I worried that if people said it often enough and loudly enough, it might come between us somehow.

"But you're not a ladder, love, or a road to anything. There's nothing beyond you. You're all I see."

 

**IV. Evening**

 

He gives his name in the ceremony: Who comes to claim her? _Aegon Targaryen, called Jon Snow as a boy_. Neither is the truth on its own, and here, facing the old gods to take a bride in what might be his last days, he wants to speak true and clear. His vow is absolute. He would take Daenerys no matter what her name, and she would take him.

She has so much reserve when she wants to have it, so much careful practiced coolness; he remembers the day he met her, and much later, the day in the Dragonpit, and how calm she'd seemed until he'd angered her.

There is none of that now. The look she gives him is tremulous, trusting, her heart in her eyes. She doesn't usually look like this outside of private, unguarded moments. He doesn't know what he looks like, but he knows that he will remember this for the rest of his days: her face as he approached and said the words, and then again, turned up to him as he helped her to her feet after the prayer.

He has a cloak. Sansa confessed two days ago that she started work on it not long after receiving his message about bringing Daenerys north with him,”in case it was needed.” It's grey, with a red dragon hastily cut from one of the Targaryen banners and affixed to it. There has been no time for intricate embroidery, no matter his sister's forethought, and no time even for the right colors.

He fixes the cloak around Dany's delicate shoulders, then kisses her as a whooping cheer goes up, then scoops her up in his arms to carry her in for a modest feast.

 

**V. The hour of the bat**

 

"Jon, we've had… there's been a raven. The Wall came down at Eastwatch. The Dead are up marching on Last Hearth."

 

**VI. The hour of ghosts**

 

There is no way for them to lie together that feels right, no way to be close enough.

They try curling together with her back to him, his arm tucked around her waist, and what's usually companionable and warm feels distant. She turns over; for a while, he holds her with her head pillowed on his chest, the fur covers up around her shoulders. She clings to him and it isn't enough. Sleep doesn't come. The peace that they've found together is impossible to reach.

Eventually, she crawls on top of him on her knees, rests her whole body atop his… he gets hard and, without words, she moves back until he's in her. The kisses are deep, breathless, nearly hopeless, the sort of kisses that only happen when you're saying farewell in the dark. Her cheeks are wet with tears; he can taste them.

When it's done, maybe for the last time… you never know when it will be the last time… they find a way. They face each other in a fierce mutual embrace, their limbs tangled, her leg bent and held between both of his. She presses her forehead to his chest, and until he sleeps, he can feel her warm, regular breath against his scarred skin. They'd slept like this the night before they reached White Harbor, but not since then.

All he's ever wanted is a chance at life… for their people, for them, now for their child growing inside her. This love is something more, a greater gift than he would ever have looked for.

 _Remember me like this_. If one of them falls, he's sure it will be him. And if he can win the war in doing so, it will be enough.

 

**VII. After the dawn**

 

Now and then, he misses hearing his name.

Very few people call him Jon anymore, and he doesn't see many of those who still do every day. Most don't call him by a name at all: he's "the king," as if he's not there, or "Your Grace" if someone speaks to him directly, and sometimes, if it's assumed he's far away indeed, it's "King Aegon." There are songs in which he's a dragon, even, a great red dragon, King of the Dawn, who flew about the kingdoms with his Queen of Fire, protecting them from the dead and from hungry lions that ate everything they saw, lions that would even have eaten the sun if the dragons hadn't stopped them. But he's never Jon Snow in the songs, never the Black Bastard of Winterfell anymore, or the White Wolf, and not a one of them speaks to the struggle and fear and great hope that went into the deeds they describe.

There's ceremony he can dispense with at will, and ceremony it would be better to maintain: part of his authority derives from being Aegon Targaryen. Telling people to call him by the name that had been his as a Northern bastard won't help matters, and won't put the whispers of the few people who resent his rule to rest, even if he was a Northern bastard when he first set himself to saving them. And while little Aemon will one day call him _Father_... as of yet, the babe doesn't speak at all. He only coos and chortles and blinks the wide indigo eyes that make a striking contrast with his soft, dark curls.

Daenerys, though. Daenerys whispers Jon's name in his ear when she's under him, or over him, or waking him, or kissing him to sleep. She calls him Jon at supper; she refers to him as Jon when she speaks to the people attending her. Sometimes she adds, "The king, that is," to clarify. Her smile when she does this is winsome.

"I wanted an Aegon," she says one day. "I wished for you. I dreamed of you. But when I met you, your name was Jon. I fell in love with Jon."

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Karna97 for Jonerys Secret Santa 2018 and [published on Tumblr at the time](https://mysnowdragons.tumblr.com/post/181546355079/a-book-of-hours-jonerys-secret-santa-2018), but I've done a few small edits since then, mostly word choices. Secondarily, it's also for my friend Tori, who brings out the absolute best in any Jonerys writing I attempt.
> 
> I really wanted to get it up here on AO3 before the Season 8 premiere... and I wanted to note that while I think some scenes will probably appear in a similar form in canon, and I tried to keep everything as plausible as possible, I don't think this is how everything is going to go. I'm particularly skeptical that Jon will do what I have him doing at the wedding in this fic, or that Sansa will actually make a cloak, and I also hope that readers understand the actual nature of Dany's reaction to the reveal. 
> 
> Other than that... well, the plot is more suggested than it is "an actual plot"! Alas. But I enjoyed writing it, and I hope it finds some kind of audience that enjoys reading it.
> 
> And a later note (June 2018): I didn't write this as a fix-it fic, but I guess it has become one. Also, I've made a slight edit to the first line to get the narrative voice closer to Jon's POV.


End file.
